“For there we loved and where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.”
– Oliver Wendell Holmes
I jotted this quote down on my phone in a common area at the college library I used to attend in Nashville, Trevecca University.
It was at least 7 years ago, and yet I remember it so well, standing in the open library foyer, right by the windows, pondering the words, considering how much they meant to me then and how much they will mean to me when I’m older.
After all my travels, I’ve found this urge from time to time to return home, or something that resembles home (a place, a person, a feeling). But each time, I remember that this “home” I seek is an illusion to me because I had no single place that I grew up.
My heart belongs not to a border, city, town, or neighborhood, but to a people, the people of this country. Yet even that is inaccurate, for the Earth reserves my heart in its entirety, and its people are so diverse.
My childhood was a rare and uncommon one. I was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, the most visually beautiful place I still claim as “home”, then moved around at a rate only few have experienced.
North Carolina to Germany to Washington DC to Jordan to Oman to Tennessee to Missouri in 17 years (visiting many more places in between).
Then, on my own this time, I moved to Nashville for college, staying in one place longer than I ever had before, 7 years. It was near the middle of this stay that I deeply questioned what “home” meant to me.
I discovered a love to travel, sprouted in my youth, as well as a love for comfort and stability, rooted in my college years.
I knew I had to choose one or the other, but I let the decision linger for another few years. Somewhere near the end of my senior year in college, I made a tiny decision that changed the course of my life.
Sitting behind my laptop in my Marketing 101 Class, half listening to my professor telling me what I should do, I went online and did what I wanted to do. I ordered a credit card, bought a 40L backpack, and booked one-way flights to New York City, Boston, and Chicago in the middle of January.
I didn’t have the money to pay for the trip, but I had the time to pay off a credit card.
I didn’t have a clue of what I was doing, but I had a deep desire to just go.
This trip would spark the ambition to see the world that set me on a course to discover not just the world but the very nature of discomfort and happiness.
Today, home is much more than a physical place or even a specific community; it is a feeling that I can produce at any time and in any place.
- It begins with meditation, recognizing where I am and the fact that I am alive and well right here and now (awareness).
- It moves into an even deeper recognition that I am truly blessed, from the solid ground I sit upon to the air moving in and out of my lungs (gratitude).
- It carries into the rest of my day, the rest of my life, with the deepest recognition that I have all I need to step out of the ego, “I” and “Me” and “Mine”, and into unabashed service, expressing love at every turn (compassion).
I encourage us to consider the place where we grew up or a place that holds special meaning in our lives.
Does this place conjure any strong feelings or thoughts? What are they? Can we learn to detach from them?
Thank you so much for reading this post on home and what it has meant to me over my short 30 years of life.
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Three More Things: